Friday, January 21, 2011

Feral talent builds (4.0.6)

This post might not be as pretty as it could be, but I want to relay as much information as efficiently as possible.

I've divided this post into three sections. First is Bear spec, second is Cat spec, and third is hybrid (Bear/Cat, Cat/Bear) spec(s).

As a precursor so I don't have to keep mentioning it later on:

Brutal Impact is really nice to have in 10m, there are times when you simply don't have another interrupter readily available to help interrupt or for some other reason it's just easier if you are interrupting which is impossible without this talent.

Fury Swipes, Stampede, and possibly Feral Aggression are all talents that vary by preference. I would never have a build without Feral Aggression (more on this down below), Fury Swipes is really nice for threat/rage generation (but doesn't proc Savage Defense), and Stampede is situational at best.

Part 1: Bear BuildThe only option for a full Bear build is the points between Fury Swipes, Feral Aggression, and Stampede. Personally I max everything except Fury Swipes. Even doing this you still have 2 spare points and they fit nicely into Fury Swipes (no other option).

Feral Aggression is extremely important as hit is not that valuable for tanking currently. If you are low on hit you might see abilities miss and miss often. It's best that when your Faerie Fire (Feral) does hit, it immediately stacks up to three. And also, like I said, you don't really have any other obvious choice for the points..

Part 2: Cat Build
I don't have much to say about the Cat build other than you have plenty of points to get everything that is a DPS increase. You end up with one extra point if you take every DPS increase and I throw it in Nurturing Instinct as it's probably the most useful if you use Tranquility and because it makes your healers stronger when they need to heal you.

Part 3: Hybrid Builds
I've always hoped that Blizzard would eventually offer tri-spec, what...a Druid can dream can't he/she? Given that isn't going to happen anytime soon or at all, it's sometimes necessary to delve into the realm of hybrid talent builds. The nice thing for me is I hardly ever DPS on my Druid so I can lean a bit heavier onto the Bear side.

There are two different mentalities one might want to use when designing a Feral hybrid spec and they can most easily be described as these:

Bear/Cat - Pick up everything you need to be an effective Tank, sacrifice some DPS

Cat/Bear - Pick up everything you need to be an effective DPS, sacrifice some Tank talents

Pretty obvious. For me I easily fall into the first camp. I need to be the best Bear I can be for progression and because I rarely DPS, for others maybe it's different. So first lets focus in on Bear/Cat and build a spec around that mentality.

Bear / Cat
For this spec we want to complete our Bear talents to be the most effective tank we can possibly be and then pick up as many Cat talents so we can effectively DPS.

The cat talents that you have to sacrifice to be the best Bear you can be are Predatory Strikes (not a huge DPS increase), Blood in the Water (unfortunate, but you need the points to mitigate spell damage), and Stampede (situational DPS increase). You also only have the option for one spare point after getting everything you need for Bear, so I suggest throwing that point into either Fury Swipes or Stampede.

Glyphs:
For hybrid specs you can always min/max depending on what you are doing in a given encounter. The only cost is the 10 gold for Dust of Disappearance. Overall I'm suggesting glyphs that will be the best of both worlds, but ideally you would change them to be appropriate on a per encounter basis.

Cat / Bear
For this spec we want to complete our Cat talents to be the most effective DPS we can, but at the same time we need to have all of the essential Bear talents so we are a logical choice and not a risk to the raid when tanking.

The only difference between this build and the Bear / Cat build above is you can free up some points from Perseverance and put them in Blood in the Water and Fury Swipes.

Glyphs:
For hybrid specs you can always min/max depending on what you are doing in a given encounter. The only cost is the 10 gold for Dust of Disappearance. Overall I'm suggesting glyphs that will be the best of both worlds, but ideally you would change them to be appropriate on a per encounter basis.